It’s been a year since violent protests tore through the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, over the death of a black teen at the hands of a white police officer, but the looting and rioting have had a dramatic effect: Real estate values have plummeted since mid-2014.
The shooting occurred Aug. 9 last year. In the days and weeks that followed, at least 100 businesses were vandalized or outright destroyed – some of them, more than once, the Gateway Pundit reported.
And all that violence has had a negative impact on residential sales and values.
The blog Construction Dive found the correlation: “Aside from the impact on existing homeowners, the shooting and the violent protests that followed have tanked home sales and prices in the city. Home to about 21,000 people, Ferguson’s housing market was already in trouble before the Aug. 9, 2014, shooting, as the city had been slow to recover from the recession. But within four months of the incident, home sales in the Saint Louis suburb had dropped by 32 percent.”
The blog pointed to the fact most crimes don’t cause lasting impacts to real estate values. But Ferguson is proving a deviation from that norm.
“The average selling price of homes in the city has continued to decline, according to real estate information service MARIS. During the first quarter of 2015, the average home sold for $22,951, two-thirds less than before the shooting,” the Construction Dive reported.
On top of these troubles, “the city is facing an increasing budget deficit and businesses damaged during the riots have struggled to recover,” the blog said.
